Roland Jupiter-4

The first Jupiter synth. It was among one of the first poly
synthesizers (4 individual voices which could be synced together for one
fat monophonic lead), it had a pitch wheel that could be assigned to the
VCA, VCF, VCO or all together, there are 8 memory locations and a cool
arpeggiator - the arpeggiator can be heard in the Duran Duran classic, "Rio". It
also has a very slow LFO for those ever-so-long filter sweeps. Pretty
good for 1978!

Not so cool however, are the 10 preset sounds which sound nothing like
the piano, brass or strings they claim to be. The placement of all the
preset buttons below the keyboard can be inconvenient, especially while
playing it. And as with most old analog synths, the Jupiter-4's tuning
can go out often. Still it is a nice analog synth for creating weird
trippy analog sounds. It's used by Meat Beat Manifesto, Gary Numan,
Thomas Dolby, Saint Etienne, the Cars, BT, Simple Minds, Moog Cookbook,
Vangelis, The Human League, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Heaven 17, and
film-maker Satyajit Ray.